


Foot on the Devil's Neck

by brittlelimbs



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Pining, idk - Freeform, or maybe it's
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 09:35:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8200268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brittlelimbs/pseuds/brittlelimbs
Summary: It's Rey's birthday and Hux is a giver.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reylotea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reylotea/gifts).



> written for my love shy last spring when she requested a fic about rey in a super lovely dress but I never really finished/posted it!!  
> nothing about this is resolved i'm so sorry aaa also the writing style isn't my usual fare but it was fun to write
> 
> title taken from chance's verse in ultralight beam

“The black one—“

“Would have been tawdry.”

Truly, it would have. Hux shudders to think what might’ve happened if Rey was forced to drudge through the buoyant, perfumed clouds of debutants in something so… shroud-like. At her own party, no less. He hides his grimace behind the glassed rim of his brandy.

“Black  _ works _ ,” Ren grits out beside him, intently watching some invisible point that looks to be somewhere in the region of the hovlight chandelier. He’s sulking now, one gloved hand unconsciously gripping his left knee to keep it from jimmying up and down agitatedly, as is its wont. He’s in a simple knitted tunic and slim trousers, finely cut; one would have to be also close as Hux is now to pick up on the subtleties of their weave and texture. Beautiful, but still _ : _ black from head to toe to fingertips. How _ boring _ .

“If you’re trying to convince me you don’t have a bias, you’re failing. Badly.”

If Ren realizes the jab, he doesn’t say it.

“It’s unbecoming,” he mumbles, looking away, instead, and when Hux’s eyes return from roving the swaying, ornate throng of guests, he nearly chokes on his drink: Ren is flushed. Gorgeously pink, high cheekbones and ears darkening sweetly at just the thought of his apprentice in the dress Hux had laid out for her. Hux feels surprised, but triumphant; his carefully curated wardrobe is working.  

“Careful, Ren. You’re slipping,” he hisses, gracefully shifting his weight onto his elbow and leaning close, as if this is nothing more than gentile conversation between the birthday girl’s closest confidants. “Wouldn’t want anyone to know how far gone you are.” He feels the smirk playing at his lips, unable to resist heckling a little further. “Or that you have no taste.”

Ren barks. “Taste? Who cares about  _ taste _ when it’ll end up in ashes, anyways. Maybe a tour of the battlefield would do good to remind you,  _ General.  _ Roughen up those soft, white hands of yours a little.”

He looks away, still blushing, and Hux knows that Ren has just realized his own mistake: he’s thinking of how these _soft, white_ _hands_ had worked him wide last night, made him come untouched, howling, in the dark warmth of their shared bed.

Hux wonders if he could condition Ren to find just the sight of his bare hands erotic, coax an automatic response with no greater stimulus than the way his fingers wrap around a stylus .

He reminds himself to wear gloves less often.

“Maybe,” he agrees, plucking another drink from a passing droid. This one is cerulean and bubbly; some type of Je’har wine, perhaps. Not his favorite, but alcoholic enough to get him through an entire evening with Kylo Ren. The brandy is already starting to work through him, and his bones feel as light and effervescent as the drink in his hands.

He takes a sip and realizes, abruptly, that he’s anxious to see her himself. What if Ren, stars forbid, was right: what if the color  _ is  _ wrong. What if his taste had been—off.

A senator passes, demurring gently with a nod of his head, raising his drink in toast. Hux returns the favor absently; he’s too busy constructing battle plans in the confines of his own mind, tactical retreats in case of catastrophic failure. Rey hadn’t expressed desire either way, of course, remaining carefully neutral, curled up in bed while Hux and Ren fought. The idea of dressing up was so foreign to her as to actually be funny.  _ What about a flight suit? _ she suggested, before burying her nose back into her holopad and stubbornly refusing to lend an argument to anyone.

Rey, Hux has learned, is unusual.  

For her twenty-first birthday, she had asked for two things: a no holds-barred duel with her Master, and five minutes on the surface of Arkanis. The former had been surprisingly easy; Ren was all grave about it, kitting them out to the full extent of their decorum, ordering the mats cleared and an official time set. Watching from the observation deck above, Hux had greatly enjoyed the result—perhaps too much. He had strained not to squeeze himself through his trousers, grateful for the thick weave of his overcoat and the First Order’s penchant for taking the privacy of their officers seriously, affording him the cover of shadow. Beautiful.  _ Striking _ , even, the sight of them dueling. Humming and sweating and darting out at each other, Ren’s blows heavy where Rey’s were quick, because they are fitted to each other, even in this.

Their bed smelled singed that night, like ozone-burn warmth, and Hux fell a little bit in love with the scent.  _ Perhaps you are confused _ , he thought to Rey, her eyes glimmering as they swept the long, arching orbit of his arms as they wrapped themselves around her shoulders. He nosed her neck.

_ It is us that should give gifts. And yet, you gave me this. _

She was smiling as she bit into the firmness of his bicep, a predator in his bed, and he vowed that he would watch them fight again.

Arkanis was a little trickier. Hux procured two days leave easily enough (the higher you climb the ranks, the more humanity you’re allowed, he’s learned), ordering a private shuttle so that he and Rey might go with minimal escort—Ren was off on some top-secret Knights drivel, some errand, coded anxious in harsh grunts and the tense, pale expanse of his back, perched on the edge of their bed in the light of artificial morning.

The two of them it was.

When they arrived, it was raining. Groundbreaking. Hux stood underneath the awning of the shuttle wing as Rey walked out to the edge of cliff they’d alighted on, arms clasped politely behind his back, waiting for—he wasn’t sure. Laughter? A biting remark? Either way, she gave him neither, offering nothing but the dark-cut shape of her silhouette against the gunmetal hills of the lowland, surveying the port below. Not Hux’s hometown, but it might have been; same spartan sprawl, same drear. He stood patiently in the chill, shivering in his greatcoat, remembering how lovely his home planet wasn’t.

She was there long enough that Hux began to puzzle. He watched her let the rain weigh dark across her shoulders, soak her through thoroughly, and wondered if she’d ever seen a storm like this one in real life. When she finally came back to the shuttle there was rainwater running down the bridge of her nose, and her eyelashes were slicked into tiny, furious points. She bowed her head to him as she passed, escort shuffling aside, and when she raised it again her pupils were pinpricks, narrowed against the overcast sky.

“General.”

“Rey.”

He dipped his head in turn, as if his mind wasn’t full to bursting with thoughts of  _ what had she seen, there on the cliff, to hold her so still _ ?  _ What deep-held secret had she read? _

He felt suddenly exposed; he did not anticipate this.

They boarded and left.

“You’re warmer than you look.”

The blue-blur current of hyperspace was carrying them home. The set of her mouth wasn’t smiling, but it wasn’t biting, either. She shivered, nucking down into the blanket he had offered her, and it was only then that Hux had remembered:

What about Rey could be anticipated, at all?

Maybe _ that’s _ what steals his breath away when he sees her. He’ll reason this later, trying to make sense of things when his brain isn’t quite so fevered with drink, with her long lines. He feels like the high note of an ignited saber, taught and quivering, that has slaked its tension into a durasteel helm: she’s here. She’s coming forwards, now, slowly making her way towards their dais while the crowd parts around her as gently as a balmy sea, as if they, too, sense that they are in the presence of something so entirely  _ worthy _ .

She sees him, raising her head like a kath hound from its kill, and Hux could have seen it from parsecs away:  _ want _ .

She is going to eat him alive.

Hux shivers as she navigates the entry way, back of his gloved hand pressed gently to his lips: a plan gone awry has never tasted so delicious as this.  

He is, after all, a military man beneath all things, medals of duty pinned right to his aching ribs somewhere under the midnight silk of his coat. His mind runs on an intricate web of surges and blockades, flanking and building, holding position; he had thought, once, there might not be so wide a gap between annexing and planet and taking a heart. He had dressed her for tonight accordingly, formed her image into one of his own, private victory, knowing intimately every stitch and seam and gossamer fold of that gown, and yet— he’s struck breathless, shocked with something that he might call pleased surprise, but not so gentle.

She’s usurped him handily; Rey cut of his cloth is something beautiful, but most of all, it’s something _ true _ .

The dress is a lux affair, but  _ fuck it _ , he realizes, letting his hand fall from his mouth to curl around his drink again. He doesn’t care about the dress. Hilarious. He’s only slightly embarrassed that its weaving was months in the making: Mygeeto silk, a close cousin of Arkanis textiles, but twice as warm. Tiny mica jewels shatter and ping in the low lamplight, drawing the eye to each point like a million tiny star systems swept across her hips and chest. The cut of it sits right close to her skin, tailored to each intimate inseam, and Hux fancies that the train alone is worth more than every portion Rey has ever eaten. He has encrusted her with a galaxy, and every objective sense, she’s  _ beautiful _ .

He congratulates himself; he deserves it.

But what’s caught in his throat isn’t the dress, per say. That’s like enjoying an ore-rich moon for its climate, his clove cigarettes for nothing more than their casing. It’s the aesthetics of  _ power _ that’s gotten him pinioned, right under his heart. Down to the way she moves, holding her shoulders taut and her arms spread just so from her sides, like a loaded trap. He’d ordered flats for her tiny feet, and he feels proud for it; she wouldn't have been so raw in heels. Beautiful, maybe, but uncertain.  _ No _ , he thinks, watching her lean distastefully away at the sharp nods and stiff bows of core-system upper crust. She moves like she always has, and always will: with wariness.

Her makeup is flawless, her dress is exquisite, and if she seemed any more dangerous, people would stare.

What a pity it would’ve been to ruin it for the sake of vanity.

A passing senator draws her into conversation, reminding Hux to break his thrall long enough to toss back the rest of the wine. Also: right. Ren. Hux is surprised; he’s stayed stoic. The only tell is the color rising ever higher in his cheeks, and the way his eyes keep flicking back to one point across the room like a shuttle in a tractor beam, unable to truly look away. Ren’s tongue peeks out over his bottom lip for a half-second, wetting it, and then Hux is caught red-handed by that dark gaze.

Hux doesn’t hide his smirk as well as he might have.

Ren’s eyes widen then his brow knits tight.  _ Fuck off. _ His dress boots shuffle as he clumsily recrosses his legs, right over left this time, and purposefully pulls his datapad from his pocket to check it. A muscle beneath his eye spasms; Hux can literally  _ see _ how difficult it is for him not to seek her out again.

Hux would give anything to crawl inside that mind at this moment, to know what he’s thinking.

Instead, he stands. The alcohol hits him more strongly than he first suspected, making him pleasantly woozy, but he steadies himself subtly against the edge of the table so he doesn’t sway. That wouldn’t do.

“If you’ll excuse me, Lord Ren.”

Ren grunts in surprise.

“It is only becoming that our lady is greeted properly. You’ll learn your manners, one day. Stars willing.”

With that, Hux steps around the table, down from the dais, and into the din of the party below.

The woman Rey is talking to is very tall and also very much flirting with her. She’s rather strapping, too; a warlord, perhaps, flipping her long sheet of silver hair over one shoulder as she stoops to kiss the back of Rey’s tender paw.

Hux does not remember inviting her. He has an excellent memory.

“General.” Rey doesn’t pull her hand away as Hux approaches, amused.

“Lady,” he says. He watches the woman rise slowly, deliberately not giving him the pleasure of watching her uncertainty or surprise.

“General Hux,” she says. Her basic is heavily accented, but pleasant. It takes Hux a moment to place the system, then another to orient himself to the sudden stream of clipped Dxun that she picks up into with her next breath.  

_ I apologize—I find myself admiring you and yours,  _ she says _ ,  _ doubled eyelids fluttering wetly _. What lengths you must have gone to acquire such a treasure. She will make a handsome bride. _

She smiles. Her blood runs green; Hux can see it in her gums, in the undertone of the flesh peeking out at her wrists and collarbones.

He curses his limited vocabulary. A small part, but a tangible part nonetheless, wants to slip inside his breast pocket for his body gun, squeeze his hands around the grip and pull the trigger, off a round or two; blaster bolts are convenient and need no translation. Intent, stated. He likes that sort of frankness more than he would like to admit. He toys at the lapel for a moment, but smooths his fingers down the placket, instead, as if dusting off some microscopic flake of dust. 

The burden of fine breeding.

“Pardon, my lady,” he says, sweet as anything and staunchly in Basic. He won’t deign to ask her name. “I believe you have the wrong party. An error in the invitations, perhaps?” Hux had hand picked the guests for this party, and she wasn’t on the list, so this is not a lie.   

“Oh?” The woman unclasps Rey’s hand, as if suddenly aware that she was still holding it.

“This is a birthday party, I’m afraid. If it’s a wedding you want, you’ll have to look elsewhere.” He purses his lips, playing at flimsy contrition. He’s not sorry. All three of them know this. “Not an inconvenience, I’d hope. ”

Rey, meanwhile, is seconds from cracking open in a grin; Hux prays she holds, for her sake.

The woman, or warlord, or whatever she might be— _ rude party guest, in any case _ —looks him up and down. Her shoulders are broad, stature built strong with competent muscle, and her robes do a poor job of hiding it. Hux finds himself squaring his own shoulders and tries not to roll his eyes. No wonder Rey finds this sort of goose-stepping hilarious.

With one final, guttural click, the woman gives a curt little bow, letting the beads of her headdress shiver against her forehead.

“My apologies once more, General. Yes. Perhaps a mistake was made.”

She bows again, to Rey this time. “M’lady, it was a pleasure making your acquaintance.”

“Likewise,” Rey grins as the woman turns to leave, working herself away between finely-clad backsides. Hux lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

He offers Rey his arm, and they fall into lockstep. She feels very warm against his side. He has to make an effort not to tread on the shimmering puddle of fabric that moves around her feet, but he can’t find it in himself to mind.

“Well.” Rey raises her eyebrows. “What did she say? Or are you not planning to tell me.”

“Worrying about trivialities is a bad habit of yours. Suffice to say it was rude.”

“Mmm. Not telling.”

She cranes up to him, then, murmuring lips prompting him to tip his head down so that he might hear her. Her breath is hot against his ear, words threading through the babbling of a hundred mouths, the clinks and hubbub.

“We didn’t all have the privilege of an Academy education, General. Some of us are stuck with Basic.”

Her hand tighten around his arm, squeezing right underneath the double stripes of his insignia. Her lips graze the bare skin underneath his earlobe, and he picks up the heart notes in the clean scent of her perfume.

Phantom fingers cup him softly beneath his trousers.  

“And—Jakken’s such an ugly language,” he chokes, clutching at decorum.  “Pity. Excuse me, Senator.”

He guides Rey around the wobbling mass of Aeschar Blimm, who grunts his greeting around his doublefisted snifters of brandy. He totters, nearly spilling on her gown; Hux swerves her out of the way just in time.

“Well. I’m glad someone’s enjoying themselves.”

“Not the birthday girl?” He cringes at the words.

“In  _ this _ ?” She laughs. “I can barely move. Even Teedo could outrun me, I think.”

“Rey,” he says. “ _ Darling.  _ ” He lets the name sit low in his mouth, curl off his tongue. This feels good. Better. “ _ I  _ think that you’re the most ungrateful hostess I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.”

He looks down at her, then, and there’s sort of a—moment. She’s stunning: radiant, even, features sharpened with kohl and powders, painted mouth parted just-so. Her freckles didn't survive the makeup intact, but he knows they’re there, the same way stars are hidden behind the bright intensity of daylight. Abruptly, he wants to kiss them all.

“Somehow, I’m not surprised,” He breathes, though it’s mostly to himself.

She smiles, then, and it’s just a little crook of her mouth, but the _ satisfaction _ in it is so intense that Hux has to look away, for fear of being blinded.

There’s a pause. Hux studies the hemlines of velveteen dress robes whispering amongst the forest of ankles; they seem to be rising of late, in accordance with some fashion trend that Hux can’t be bothered to keep up with. Rey clears her throat.

“How’s Ren?”

“Sulking.”

“Does he need rescuing?”

“Perhaps. He’s excited to see you, though.”

“Mm.” Rey’s getting that glazed-over look that drops over her eyes when she’s rustling around in their bond, skimming her fingers across the surface of Ren’s mind. Hux still feels the echo of jealousy in the pit of his stomach. Things are better than they were, but.

He grabs another drink from the selection rolling past his elbow, perched atop a server droid. This one goes back easier than the other two, or three—he forgets, the same way he doesn’t remember the taste of this one, either.

“Hux.”

“Oh. I’m sorry—where are my manners. Did you want one as well?” His voice is a little more clipped than normal, and he’s not looking at her. “The wine is a bit dry—“

“ _ Hux _ .”

He stops. He doesn’t say  _ sorry _ but his silence does the work for him.  

“Let’s go,” Rey says.

“Alright,” Hux says, dumbly. 

They don't go; she takes him by the nape, instead, and he goes down willingly. The drink hits his consciousness in waves, making everything fuzzed-out and warm. Blurring out the hard edges, just enough. She presses her forehead up against his, the plane of it hot and dry, as if, through touch alone, she might share the mixed-up brilliance of their bond. His thoughts to theirs, hardwired in touch.

“He’s excited to see you, too, you know,” she says.

Hux nods against her. His head swims; he did not expect this.

“Yes.”

Suddenly he realizes that she’s not letting him go, and he’s starting to get nervous. “We have reputations to uphold,” he says. It comes out more weakly than he meant it to.

“You might. Took a lot to get me into this dress, I reckon.”

“You have no idea.”

“I think,” she says, hooking her hands into his lapels, standing up on the very tips of her toes to speak into his mouth. “I think you’re just as eager to see me out of it.”

“I—“

Her grin is just the tiniest bit wolfish, eyes blown black and speckled starry with the reflections of the lights above. When she kisses him, it’s half a bite, and Hux has to take a minute to remember who he is, where he is. What they’re doing. There’s a sting and he tastes blood on his lip, then he’s brushing the pads of his fingers against it before he can stop himself. They come away wet. Oh, _ shit _ .

“Not here.” His voice sounds desperate, even to his own ears, and this seems to please her to no end— _ prey _ , if he thought about it too hard.

He curses language again as Rey takes his arm.  _ Not here  _ means  _ yes _ in scavenger; apparently he’s not fluent in that, either.

“What in sith hells happened to your mouth?”

Hux decides that  _ disgruntled _ is an interesting look on Kylo Ren: he’s curled against the long banquet table, blushing deliciously, and, by all accounts, trying his damndest to hide it.

Hux also decides, in quick succession, that silence is his best weapon at this point. Things do not seem to go well if he talks; the alcohol sits heavy on the back of his tongue, fogging it. Neither of them are in top shape, stars know: the dress isn’t it doing Ren any favors, either. Hux bets anything that he wishes he had his mask. Ren moves his head stiffly, sharp jerks of his neck, like he’s used to peering through that narrow grille, his helmet dented and war-weary and obstructing his vision. Hux can’t remember the last time he stalked the halls of Starkiller without it on.

Hux raises a finger to his lip again, watching a bead of blood tremble dark on the fingertip of his leather glove when he pulls it away.

Rey looks at Ren. Ren looks at Hux, uncomprehending. Then Ren  _ really _ looks at him, laced with something Hux is too force-deaf to identify, and his mouth drops open. Just slightly.

“ _ Well _ ,” he mumbles. Hux swears his voice has gotten deeper by at least three octaves.

 

Rey leans bodily over the table as if moving to scent Ren, leaving Hux gaping at the way the embroidered crystals on her bodice fall forwards like the strange, glittering hackles of some beast. 

“I want to be  _ fucked _ ,” says Rey. Her voice echoes into the shadow she’s casting with her closeness. Precise, deliberate.

_ Oh _ , Hux thinks while Ren, as a person, sort of-- stutters. 

“You don’t like parties,” says Rey, leaning closer still. “Can’t even _ pretend  _ you like parties.”

 

Ren has folded for less, honestly. 

Hux should be irritated. Hux should be  _ enraged _ : he’s been planning this for months. His own pet project, invitation list crafted carefully to keep their circles tight, tens of thousands of credits spent on a dress with a lifespan only one night long. 

 

Hux likes his well executed plans. 

 

“ _ I  _ hate parties,” he babbles instead. 

 

He wants to die immediately. He can practically taste the polish of his boots, foot quite firmly in mouth. Ren, seeming to have overcome his awe at Rey’s forwardness, looks embarrassed for him. Rey’s mouth is nothing more than a sly twist, eyes are sharp.  

 

“Well,” Rey says. 

 

Then the two of them are doing that talking-in-their-heads thing and Hux isn't used to having decisions wrested from his hands like this, but it feels nice, he thinks. Suddenly, like a spell broken or sightline severed, Ren looks to Hux: 

“Wait here for us,” he says, hair brushing his cheeks as he nods his head to take Rey’s hand, all at once arrestingly poised, and  _ stars how did that happen so quick _ . Knight, now, tongue-in-cheek slant to his mouth not enough to make him any less stupidly regal. Rey, wild-thing, predator, does not startle at Ren’s offered arm. The two of them are twinned down and down to the way they walk from the dias and slip away to a back door, arresting, nonchalant as if they were nipping out for some fresh air-- though you’d have to be mad to consider Arkanis’s climate  _ refreshing _ or  _ brisk _ . 

Doesn’t matter. Hux watches them leave leaned too heavily on the table, fingers splayed out and arm locked to catch his weight. They’re beautiful. 

_ Them _ , truly, not just her: the cut of Ren’s waist is intensely pleasing and strangely intimate. Ren is so rarely in anything less than his dark, bulky wools, built huge and hulking by layers on layers of coal. It’s sinful, almost, to see him so svelte. Not slender; Hux knows the packed on solidness of that scarred-up body well, too well, to think of it as anything dainty. But the clinging darkness of his tunic about his hips-- Hux swallows. Rey and Ren naked are wonderful, he thinks, but  _ stars _ , clothes are magnificent things. 

 

He’s not quite sure how the time without them passes. 

 

Autopilot, lucky to have worked the persnickety Order political circles enough to know how to charm and chat without putting any heart into it. Bows exchanged, hands shaken to keep his own occupied so he doesn’t press against the growing, needy bulge in his trousers that’s getting more insistent by the second. Don’t think of her, of the dress.  _ How horribly, gruesomely lonely you are without the two of them right there _ \--breathe. Smalltalk, circulate, keep their timetable. 

Five minutes:  _ must be nearing the residential sector. _

Ten minutes:  _ probably found a room. Maybe one of ours, maybe not.  _

Twenty minutes:  _ she’s undressed by now. She has to be. Already soaking-- _

His comm bleeps and his hand flies to it as if possessed, promptly interrupting the dignitary before him and both her wagging, purple tongues.  _ Fuck this. Fuck all this _ ; the splendor and clamor and everything about it. His magnificent jacket and tailored uniform fit all wrong. He feels, at once, as if he is on fire, lit up by nothing more than the neat Aurebesh line:  

 

_ her room. now _

 

Cold boy, Arkanis boy, leaves the party, seeking his warmth. 

  
  



End file.
